The first is obvious, recycle. The old wine bottles of today can become new by simply putting them into your recycling container. The other ideas are a tad bit more creative and fun--be sure to check out the slide show to see some of these ideas in use.
Here in our house, we end up with a lot of empty bottles...it's one of the benefits of the job! To try to do our part to reuse them, we make our own "aqua globes" for watering potted plants. The bottles actually add to the look of the planters...but you can hide them in the foilage as well if you want to. Here are some other recycle ideas for your empties:
- Use the bottle as the base of a candle, adding a hurricane top. A display of several different sized bottle candles can be just gorgeous.
- Use clean empty and de-labeled wine bottles to serve water at your next dinner party. Different colored glass bottles can give a nice effect to your table.
- Carefully place clear or multi-color LED light strands into bottles for decoration. A fun winery we visited had the bottles suspended on a line with the lights inside--very cool indeed! If you are handy, you can carefully drill a hole in the bottom of the bottle to thread the cord through.
- Use various sized bottles for decoration on cabinet tops.
- Different sized bottles work very well as bud vases for single flowers.
- Select some pretty colored bottles and sit them on a window sill. The light shines through them and it's really quite beautiful.
- Fill wine bottles with sand, turn bottles upside down and bury half way into dirt (or put upside down bottles onto dowels) to line a garden bed.
- Get a large quantity of olive oil, pour it into large jars, sprigs of your favorite dried herbs, cover and let sit for a while in a dark place. Whenever there is a gift occasion, strain some oil into a wine bottle, add some dried herbs, cork it and refrigerate--you have a great gift ready to go. (Be very careful when flavoring olive oil with garlic or other food items. There is a very serious risk of botulism, which can be deadly...I recommend staying away from garlic and using only dried herbs--keeping the mixture refrigerated at all times to be safe)
- Buy wicks attached to covers (available at some vineyards) to turn your old wine bottle into a lantern using lamp oil. These are very pretty.
- If you have artistic talent you could paint vines or flowers and vines on used bottles and give the bottles as gifts--they do make great vases.
- Fill bottles with marbles or sea glass and put them in windows. They're beautiful.
- Another great use for wine bottles is using them for bath salts that you make. You can purchase the plain, non scented salts at any craft store and add what ever fragrance you'd like to them. You can find the various fragrance oils needed at the craft store also. Add a cute "stopper", place a ribbon around the bottle and you've got great and inexpensive gifts.
- Fill the bottles with homemade flavored vinegar. First decide which vinegar variety you'll use. Next place any fresh herb you'd like in a large container (not the bottles at this point) and pour your vinegar over the herbs, covering them completely. Store the container in the fridge for about 2 weeks. Once the time period is up, strain the liquid/herbs through cheesecloth, then add to bottles. A quicker way is to bring the vinegar to a simmer before pouring over herbs. It'll help bring out a deeper "flavor". Be sure to keep both mixtures refrigerated, even after transferring to the bottles.
- Empty wine bottles can be used for almost any dry household ingredient such as coffee creamer, sugar, dry dishwasher crystals, bubble bath and even rice!
These are just a few ways to reuse the empty wine bottles you may have. If you can think of any other ideas, email me at winefromthevine@gmail.com and I'll add them to the list!
No comments:
Post a Comment